Questionnaire surveys undertaken in 1988 and annually from 2003 through 2014 of recent homebuyers in each of four U.S. metropolitan areas shed light on their expectations and reasons for buying during the recent housing boom and subsequent collapse. They also provide insight into the reasons for...

The paper uses quarterly indexes of existing single-family home prices estimated with microdata on properties that sold more than once to estimate excess returns to investment in owner-occupied housing. Housing prices and excess returns are estimated over the period 1970:1 to 1986:3 for Atlanta,...

Do homes in low- and moderate- income areas of a city appreciate like homes in high income areas? Do owners of those lower-priced homes accumulate as much equity as owners of higher-priced homes? Karl Case and Maryna Marynchenko share their results, some of which are quite surprising.

This paper analyzes the pattern of house price appreciation in the Boston area from 1982 to 1994. The empirical results are consistent with the predictions of a standard urban model in which towns have a fixed set of amenities. The evidence suggests that changes in the cross-sectional pattern of...

The U. S. market for homes appears not to be efficient. A number of information variables predict housing price changes and excess returns of housing relative to debt over the succeeding year. Price changes observed over one year tend to continue for one more year in the same direction....